5) ICE CREAM & CAKE. A Baskin-Robbins commercial using an infectious ditty from the guys who gave you Peanut Butter Jelly Time. You’ll be humming it all day long. Or impaling your brain with a wire hanger to make you forget. 50-50 chance, I’d say.

Put a call into my financial advisor the other day. Wanted to check on my retirement account. He called back later to let me know that a near mint Charizard card and $250 in unused Flooz was not really much of a retirement account. He also told me to lose his number or face a restraining order.

Retirement? Yeah, it looks like I’ll be bagging groceries until I’m 85.

The last season of LOST is over six months away. Well, sometime in 2010, so around six months away, right? And it seems like ages because most of us are still reeling from that season finale. That’s why I’m so bloody grateful that, in the wake of Comic-Con, we are lucky to have a ton of LOST goodies on the net, from promos for the next season to ancillary material that only serves to enhance the whole experience.

Starting off, here’s the beginning of an In Search Of spoof that purports to explore and expose the Dharma Initiative in all its conspiratorial goodness. (The rest of the five-part series will continue to unfold in weeks to come.) It’s called MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE. Believe it … or not!

And while you’re at it, go ahead and study the mysteries of the universe when you matriculate at LOST UNIVERSITY. (I said, “Matriculate!”)

Straight from Comic-Con itself, here’s a piece from the LOST panel that features an excerpt from AMERICA’S MOST WANTED with a familiar face. Take note of the comments from the producers; that’s a clue!

My cousin Daniella gave me a picture of herself for my twelfth birthday. I was a little creeped out by that, even then. My aunt Shiobhan told me with a giggle that Daniella had a crush on me. Double creeped out by that. Yet when I saw Daniella a few years after college at a family reunion, I was surprised to find that the previously awkward preteen with braces and Coke bottle lens glasses was now a complete and utter hottie. Lemme tell you – the thoughts that went through my mind that day … man, still very much creeped out by those!

There’ve been a lot of celebrity passings lately. Many have been given their fond farewells in the press and media, some more fondly than others. And while I’ve lost some heroes recently, I haven’t spoken much of it because – well, because the famous tend to get their due elsewhere. But today – today I’ve lost a personal favorite. And he won’t be mentioned on the front page or on CNN Headline News.

Les Lye, the adult on the Canadian children’s series You Can’t Do That On Television, has passed away at age 84.

For those of us of a certain generation – those who grew up with Nickelodeon in any way, shape or form … the kids, now adults, who knew Danger Mouse before he was a rapper, who thought Dave Coulier didn’t need Saget and Stamos to be funny, and who, given half the chance, would always opt for the physical challenge – You Can’t Do That On Television was and remains a very enjoyable reminiscence. It was silly, stupid, predictably over-the-top, and always wonderfully funny and full of wacky nonsense. The kids on the show were relative unknowns at the time and, save probably for Alanis Morissette, pretty much remain so to this day. And then there was Les.

Although he had a long and storied career in the Great White North, Les will be most fondly remembered by most American kids (myself included) for portraying numerous regular characters on YCDTOT, including Ross, the studio director, and Barth, the inexplicably disgusting chef. He’s one of those childhood memories that will forever leave you smiling.